When, six months later, the war at Boston settled into a mere siege, Washington wrote that “seeing no prospect of returning to my family and friends this winter, I have sent an invitation to Mrs. Washington to come to me,” adding, “I have laid a state of difficulties, however, which must attend the journey before her, and left it to her own choice.” His wife replied in the affirmative, and one of Washington’s aides presently wrote concerning some prize goods to the effect that “There are limes, lemons and oranges on board, which, being perishable, you must sell immediately. The General will want some of each, as well of the sweetmeats and pickles that are on board, as his lady will be here to-day or to-morrow. You will please to pick up such things on board as you think will be acceptable to her, and send them as soon as possible; he does not mean to receive anything without payment.” Lodged at head-quarters, then the Craigie house in Cambridge, the discomforts of war were reduced to a minimum, but none the less it was a trying time to Mrs. Washington, who complained that she could not get used to the distant cannonading, and she marvelled that those about her paid so little heed to it. With the opening of the campaign in the following summer she returned to Mount Vernon, but when the army was safely in winter quarters at Valley Forge she once more journeyed northward, a trip alluded to by Washington in a letter to Jack, as follows: “Your Mamma is not yet arrived, but … expected every hour. [My aide] Meade set off yesterday (as soon as I got notice of her intention) to meet her. We are in a dreary kind of place, and uncomfortably provided.” And of this reunion Mrs. Washington wrote, “I came to this place, some time about the first of February where I found the General very well,… in camp in what is called the great valley on the Banks of the Schuylkill. Officers and men are chiefly in Hutts, which they say is tolerably comfortable; the army are as healthy as can be well expected in general. The General’s apartment is very small; he has had a log cabin built to dine in, which has made our quarters much more tolerable than they were at first” Such “winterings” became the regular custom, and brief references in various letters serve to illustrate them. Thus, in 1779, Washington informed a friend that “Mrs. Washington, according to custom marched home when the campaign was about to open;” in July, 1782, he noted that his wife “sets out this day for Mount Vernon,” and later in the same year he wrote, “as I despair of seeing my home this Winter, I have sent for Mrs. Washington;” and finally, in a letter he draughted for his wife, he made her describe herself as “a kind of perambulator, during eight or nine years of the war.”